Yellowknife reassessing fire hall expansion after bids come in higher than expected

Yellowknife's city manager says a fire hall expansion plan is being reassessed after bids for the project came in much higher than expected. 

The city budgeted $21 million to renovate and expand the 36-year-old building. The original cost estimate for the project, from 2020, ranged from around $3 million to $7 million.

The city received three bids on a recent tender to do the work, and they ranged from $35 million to more than $39 million.

City manager Stephen Van Dine said they came as a shock.

"We didn't expect it to be this much higher, but as it turned out the study in 2020 didn't think so either," Van Dine said.

"But here we are and we're now being faced with an inflated price, so the question today is, where to from here?"

When the fire hall was built in 1989, Yellowknife's population was around 15,000 people — it's now more than 20,000 — and the fire department employed fewer people.

In 2021, city council received a report highlighting that the Yellowknife Fire Department had outgrown the existing fire hall and that the building had inadequate HVAC systems, no air locks to control exhaust emissions and not enough space to accommodate an increase in staff.

The tender issued this year for the fire hall expansion included addressing these issues and others.

Of the $21 million the city budgeted for the project, around $10 million was allocated to start the project this year with an additional $5 million set aside for 2026 and in 2027. 

Van Dine said one option that may be feasible is to construct a new building instead of renovating the current structure. He said the tendering process has been cancelled while staff decide whether to bring the topic forward during the budget process for 2026, or to bring it to council before then.

In the meantime, he said, the fire hall is still operational — for now.

"It's not ideal — the issues that have been identified need to be addressed," said Van Dine.

"If there was an imminent health and safety risk for folks today, then absolutely we'd be doing whatever remedial measures necessary to make sure that it's a safe place to work."

The money for the expansion project would come from the city's capital fund. Van Dine said he is not aware of any territorial or federal grants that could help cover the costs.

"Unlike some of the other projects where we may be eligible for some federal offsets or some offsets from other levels of government to help us with our capital projects, this isn't one of those. So it really would come down to decisions with council on how best to proceed," said Van Dine.

The tender documents for the project total over 1,000 pages. The proposed plan would have seen renovations not only to ventilation, piping and building space, but also to the overall look and feel of the building, with exterior work, painting, roofing, furniture and finishes.